AMST 3100 The 1960s The Psychedelic Movement Part 2

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AMST 3100 The 1960sThe Psychedelic MovementPart
2

• Powerpoint 7
• Read the web notes by Owsley On Psychedelics for
  an editorial by one of the persons who made acid
  so available during the 1960s.
  
• Primary source is Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven
  LSD and the American Dream, 1998
  

2
LSD and the Beats

• The Beats were hip. They excelled at producing
  existential vaudeville theater experiences that
  were surreal.
  
• The Beats loved absurdity.
• In doing so, they were morphing into what would
  later be called hippies.
  
• A distinguishing feature of the hippies was the
  presentation of the absurd self.
  
• It was the emerging fashion to push things to
  their extreme, including all kinds of sexual and
  drug experimentation, and this became a hallmark
  of the 1960s counterculture.

Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. Cassady was the
living display of sublime absurdity, and Kerouac
a bit more socially restrained really admired
Cassady.
3
Timothy Leary as Advocate

• Leary was a product of the 1950s backlash
  movement called humanistic psychology.
  
• It was time to ask what made people healthy not
  just what made them sick.
  
• Learys humanism led him to have contempt for the
  Organization Man conformity of that era.
  
• When he discovered psychedelic drugs for himself
  in 1960 he felt that he had discovered a tool to
  unleash the intuitive mind and to experience
  profound transformations.
• And he couldnt wait to share his discovery.

Timothy Leary, 1963.
4
Timothy Leary as Advocate

• Leary experimented with psychedelic drugs at
  Harvard, using his students as assistants.
  
• Their first experiment was to give psilocybin to
  175 people in a naturalistic study.
  
• Over 50 of the participants claimed the
  experience taught them something about
  themselves, and 90 wanted to try it again.
  
• By 1961 it was less clear whether Leary was
  running a scientific experiment or whether he was
  trying to start a cultural revolution.
  
• By 1962 Leary was experimenting with LSD. If
  psilocybin was all about love, LSD was all about
  death and rebirth. It was much more powerful.

Dr. Timothy Leary at Harvard.
5
Leary, Huxley, and Ginsberg

• Leary and Huxley exchanged enthusiastic
  correspondence over Learys research.
  
• They discussed the proper strategy to introduce
  mind expansion to a culture of Organization Men.
  
• Huxley argued that they should turn on artistic,
  intellectual and economic elites, and Leary
  initially agreed.
  
• However, after listening to Allen Ginsberg, Leary
  would later shift toward making LSD available to
  a wider array of people.
  
• Ginsberg stressed that it should be up to the
  individual and that everyone, not just elites,
  should have access to LSD. Ginsberg was an
  egalitarian.
• By turning everyone on, they would generate a
  snowball effect of mass change.

Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and Ralph Metzner
at Millbrook, 1966.
6
LSD Spreads Across the Popular Culture

• Eventually psychedelic drug use spread across
  different groups, including the wealthy and the
  avant-garde, who mingled at the same drug parties
  that Beats, artists, and intellectuals attended.
• Note the motivations for drug use varied by the
  group. Some took the drugs mainly for pleasure
  purposes while others took them for spiritual
  growth purposes.
• Gradually the West Coast parties began to
  emphasize the pleasure purposes.
  
• This was not a problem for Timothy Leary, who
  felt that American culture was too rigid and
  sexually hung-up. Leary believed pleasure and
  spirituality were linked.

7
Social Change

• At the core of the egalitarian philosophy was
  that true social change begins from the bottom
  among the masses - and moves up to the elite.
  This view opposes the more elitist view that
  change must stem from elites and their
  institutions, and the masses will follow.
• The problem with the egalitarian approach was
  that by giving everyone access to acid, there
  would be many casualties.
  
• This debate relates to a deeper debate
• The most important debate within the
  counterculture involved whether to place the
  emphasis upon Nirvana or Utopia as the primary
  goal of The Movement.

Utopia Visionaries
Nirvana Visionary
8
Personal Politics versus Institutional Politics

• The 1960s protestors felt that both personal
  (psychological) and institutional (social
  structural) changes were needed, but which was
  more important making people at peace with
  themselves or making institutions more
  humanistic?
• Hippies and Radicals were split on this issue.
• Hippies favored a personal-change emphasis, with
  LSD as the tool for personal introspection. Their
  goal was Nirvana.
  
• Radicals (like the Black Panthers and SDS)
  favored an institutional-change emphasis, with
  organized social activism as the tool for change.
  The radicals goal was Utopia.

9
Personal Politics versus Institutional Politics

• Regardless of whether the emphasis was on Nirvana
  or Utopia, the two are interrelated.
  
• Under a Nirvana emphasis, we would expect that as
  minds became loving, institutions would
  eventually be reconstructed to be more
  humanistic.
• Under a Utopian emphasis, we would expect that as
  institutions became more humane, minds would
  eventually be reconstructed to be more loving and
  compassionate toward others.
• Both approaches are valid.

The Woodstock concert is often regarded as a
symbolic pinnacle of the peace and loving aspects
of the counterculture. Indeed, when Abbie Hoffman
tried to deliver a political speech he was
largely ignored or booed by a crowd not so
interested in radical political speeches. This
crowd was perhaps closer to the psychedelic
counterculture than the political radical
counterculture, but they were intertwined.
10
Timothy Leary as Spiritual Prophet

• By 1962, Leary was beginning to see himself as a
  spiritual prophet of sorts that he needed to
  lead society to a higher consciousness.
  
• Learys research had confirmed that psychedelic
  drugs produced forms of the mystical experience.
  
• His mission was assuming an increasingly
  religious or spiritual tone.
  
• According to his friends characterization, he
  saw himself as having evolved from his earlier
  - more scientific - self into a spiritual Guru
  self. He was losing interest in the scientific
  component of psychedelics. For this reason,
  Harvard would eventually boot him out.

11
The Politics of Consciousness

• Lysergic acid hits the spot. Forty billion
  neurons, thats a lot. Marshall McLuhan.
  
• By 1962, the mood began to change.
• Some psychiatrists began to feel that LSD was a
  dagger pointed at the heart of psychiatry. They
  were fearful that the increasingly visible and
  controversial Leary would bring down the house.
• LSD had become easy to get, and it was now
  associated with an emerging hedonistic California
  subculture.
  
• Others in psychiatry advocated continued LSD
  experimentation.

12
Research into LSD Safety

• By the mid-60s, qualms about the safety of LSD
  were being put to rest.
  
• Researcher Sidney Cohen surveyed a sample of 5000
  LSD users and learned that an average of 1.8
  psychotic episodes occurred per 1000 ingestions
  far less than the anti-drug forces had argued.
  LSD was fairly safe.

13
LSD as a therapy tool

• With the question of safety out of the way,
  interest now focused on the best way to use LSD.
  
  
• There were 2 schools of thought for LSD use
  within the field of psychiatry
  
• 1. LSD could be used as a facilitator of
  traditional Freudian psychiatry, or
  
• 2. LSD could be used in huge doses to try to
  produce an integrative or mystical insight that
  would lead to a radical change in behavior. This
  was called psychedelic therapy.
• If successful, the effects could be dramatic.
  Humphrey Osmond claimed a success rate of 50-70
  for chronic alcoholics, while Dr. Al Hubbard (by
  now a PhD) reported a success rate of 80.

Popular Science article, 1967.
14
LSD therapy

• What some trippers discovered was that,
  underneath the fragile ego, there exists an
  imperishable self that is at one with nature,
  death, and the universe.
• Much therapy involved moving past the vain ego
  into this selfless state. If successful, neurotic
  patterns die away because neurosis stems from an
  insecure ego. This is how the Freudians see it.

The 1967 Summer of Love in Haight Ashbury
embraced this vision of loving selflessness,
melding psychology with new age spiritualism and
mysticism.
15
Different Interpretations of LSD

• However, LSDs effects were seen differently by
  different researchers.
  
• One researcher might see LSD dissolving the ego
  while another might see it as a form of
  depersonalization, while Timothy Leary saw the
  same effects as a mystical union or an
  integrative experience.
• A hallucination to one was a vision to another.
• These discrepant interpretations represented turf
  wars between various types of psychologists, as
  well as spiritualists, artists and others.

16
1962 LSD Research is Curtailed

• To conservative representatives of the
  Establishment, LSD was harmful. Period. In 1962,
  Congress passed a law that gave the FDA approval
  over all new experimental drugs.
• This law was aimed mostly at speed, but it could
  be used against LSD too. LSD was no longer so
  readily available for research after 1962.
  
• The research machine was being turned off by the
  authorities.
  
• However, it was too late to turn off the
  publicity machine.

LSD glassware seized in a drug raid.
17
The Fifth Freedom

• If the psychedelic movement had a nostalgic
  highpoint, it might be in mid-1962 when Timothy
  Leary gathered 35 LSD experimenters in Mexico for
  tripping.
• Leary was interested in internal freedom,
  involving the right to do what one wanted with
  ones own consciousness. This was the Fifth
  Freedom to Leary.
• By this point, Leary had rejected the idea of
  turning on only elites. What was needed was a
  group of well-trained acid guides, capable of
  training others in the art of psychedelics.
• So Leary founded the International Foundation for
  Internal Freedom (IFIF) to promote the movement.
  
• IFIF lasted only a year. Leary dissolved it in
  1963 as too rigid or too bureaucratic. Learys
  attention shifted toward founding a commune that
  would offer less formalized training.

18
Learys goal 4 million

• Leary estimated that 25,000 people had used LSD
  by 1961. He forecasted that by 1967 one million
  people would try it.
  
• To Leary, the magic number was 4 million people,
  after which he felt the movement would have
  enough momentum to bring great change in American
  society.

19
1962 the good ole days

• Learys subculture blended Beat coolness with a
  zest for having fun while learning at the same
  time. The prevailing mood was serious cosmic
  fun.
• At this point (1962) the subculture was moving
  beyond Beat but had not yet morphed into the
  hippie scene.
  
• The official definition of LSD at that time was
  that it was potentially useful but had become
  dangerous in the irresponsible hands of
  scientists like Timothy Leary.
• By now, the psychedelic movement was generating
  much publicity. Of the many magazine articles
  written about LSD at that time, Playboy provided
  one of the only positive articles.

LSD in liquid form.
20
1963 Huxley dies

• It was soon after then (11-22-63) that Aldous
  Huxley would die of disease and expressed his
  wish to his wife that he die while tripping.
  
• Huxley believed in LSD but feared that the
  politics of LSD would bring the movement to an
  end.
  
• Given the socially conservative climate of
  America, he did not want anyone to promote LSD
  irresponsibly.

21
Learys Millbrook Commune

• During the early 1960s, Leary moved to Millbrook,
  NY, where he established a psychedelic commune on
  the wealthy estate of a benefactor.
  
• Millbrook became the center of the psychedelic
  movement, which was growing in popularity.
  
• Leary offered a merging of psychology with a dose
  of spiritualism and hedonism at Millbrook.
  
• The weekend drug parties at Millbrook quickly
  became famous.
  
• Click here to link to Timothy Leary and Richard
  Alperts 1963 article, The Politics of
  Consciousness Expansion, published in The
  Harvard Review.

Leary at Millbrook. The NY estate was on loan
from a wealthy supporter, but expenses to run it
were high.
22
Kesey The Boy Most Likely to Succeed

• In the early 1950s, Timothy Leary was a well
  respected psychologist. By 1963 he was a famous
  psychedelic guru.
  
• A similar change occurred for Ken Kesey.
• Kesey was a regular jock athlete with a likeable
  personality who got good grades in school. As a
  senior in high school he was voted most likely
  to succeed.

Ken Kesey, 1967.
23
Kesey discovers LSD for himself

• When Kesey attended the Stanford Writing Program
  in 1958 he discovered that he was a gifted writer
  and that he was attracted to the Beat
  subculture.
• He grew a beard, began playing folk songs on his
  guitar, and started to smoke pot.
  
• Later he volunteered as a drug tester at a
  hospital studying psychedelic drugs.
  
• Kesey found that LSD was great and became an
  instant convert to the cause.

Ken Kesey, author.
24
Kesey becomes famous

• It was during this period that he got his
  material for his famous novel, One Flew Over the
  Cuckoos Nest.
  
• This novel was a metaphor of 1950s America, where
  there was no room for individuality in the
  combine.
  
• Meanwhile, Kesey began to have gatherings for
  mutual drug exploration in his California home.
  
• By 1962, an inner circle of fellow-adventurers
  had emerged to call themselves the Merry Band of
  Pranksters, with Kesey at the center of it all
  and with Neal Cassady as their role model.

This 1962 book captured an emerging theme of the
counterculture that society and its
institutions were over-rationalized and had
become quasi-totalitarian as they denied
individual free will.
25
How does one sustain Nirvana?

• One of the issues Ken that Kesey and Neal Cassady
  were familiar with involved how to sustain ones
  state of cosmic consciousness.
  
• As Leary and others in the movement had
  discovered, people would often drift back to old
  routines and regress.

Neal Cassady, the driver of the Merry Prankster
bus called Further.
26
So how does one sustain Nirvana?

• Over at Millbrook in New York, Leary and others
  were working on ways to break set. This
  involved brain research and other ways to sustain
  nirvana.
• On the West coast, Kesey and the Pranksters
  believed the trick was to live totally in the
  here and now, where one was not trapped by the
  socially conditioned self.

Photo of the Millbrook house. Notice the art work
on the house.
27
The Pranksters take a trip

• By 1964 Kesey had finished his second novel and
  purchased a bus to travel with his Merry
  Pranksters across the country to New York for its
  publication party. They were going to go to the
  Worlds Fair - and also to look up Timothy
  Leary.
• The bus, named Further, was equipped with motion
  film cameras, a sound system, and drugs. They
  planned on making a film of their adventure to
  the East Coast and filmed almost anything and
  everything.

With Kesey on the roof and Cassady at the helm,
the Merry Pranksters head East.
28
The Pranksters go to Millbrook

• When they reached Millbrook, they realized that
  the psychedelic movement had split in different
  directions.
  
• Timothy Learys group regarded the Pranksters as
  too garish, while the Pranksters regarded
  Millbrook as too stuffy and egghead like.
  
• In others words, Millbrook was too scientifically
  serious while the Pranksters were too
  hedonistic.
  
• The Millbrook meeting strengthened the
  Pranksters sense of their own psychedelic
  identity as a distinct and separate subculture
  from the Leary crowd.

The is a 1964 photo of Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs and
other Merry Pranksters when they arrived at
Millbrook. They are apparently waiting to see
Timothy Leary. Unfortunately Timothy Leary was in
an extended session, but he eventually came out
to greet his West Coast visitors.
29
The psychedelic movement splits

• The Pranksters avoided the European-style
  intellectual heaviness or seriousness of
  Learys subculture.
  
• They also rejected the careful reliance on LSD
  guides that Leary believed was necessary for the
  revolution.
  
• Instead they adopted a go with the flow
  approach.
  
• But here were the seeds of disaster where Leary
  pulled away from Huxley, Kesey was pulling away
  from Leary. Kesey was developing an even looser
  code where anyone and everyone could take LSD
  freely. This was exactly what Huxley feared would
  happen, and what would bring the authorities to
  put a stop to LSD. Ultimately the publicity drawn
  by both Leary and the Kesey acid tests would
  attracted not just the countercultural hipsters
  it attracted the attention of the moralistic
  authorities.

The growing psychedelic movement attracted the
attention of prosecutors, one of whom was G.
Gordon Liddy, who would later raid the Millbrook
house in 1966 to bust Leary.
30
The West Coast scene

• When the Merry Pranksters returned to the West
  Coast in 1964 they believed they represented a
  legitimate heir to the psychedelic movement.
  
• In this hedonistic subculture, there were no
  rules. New recruits had to figure out for
  themselves what the informal norms were and prove
  themselves before being accepted into the group.
• At Millbrook, new recruits were given Learys
  intellectual writings. At Keseys home, new
  recruits were given comic books and science
  fiction novels like Stranger in a Strange Land
  about an alien on Earth who had no ego.

Ken Kesey with some of the Merry Pranksters in
San Francisco, 1966.
31
Pranksters and Hells Angels?

• As Keseys subculture grew it attracted the
  authorities. Narcotics raids were infrequent,
  however, and generally did not yield much.
  
• By 1965, the Pranksters decided to test their
  philosophy of love and drugs on the Hells
  Angels.
  
• Hunter Thompson was the midwife for this strange
  bedfellow meeting between hippies and Hells
  Angels. It went surprisingly well but
  unfortunately increased the Angels sense of
  self-importance.
• The Hells Angels would go on to provide security
  at various pop festivals. The most notorious was
  Altamont in 1969, where they murdered a man and
  beat up members of the Jefferson Airplane.

The Hells Angels consisted mostly of thugs who
refused to conform to mainstream society.
However, with the Merry Pranksters they got along
relatively well. Hunter Thompson would hang out
with the Hells Angels for a year and write a book
about his experiences, thus beginning his career
as his own gonzo style journalist.
32
Allen Ginsberg

• At the same time that Kesey was taming the Hells
  Angels, Kesey was also meeting with Allen
  Ginsberg.
  
• Ginsberg brought his radical egalitarian politics
  into the West Coast movement, which was already
  somewhat egalitarian under Kesey.

Allen Ginsberg in the mid-1960s.
33
The Acid Test Parties 1965-66

• The Acid Test was Keseys experiment on the
  nature of group mind and a possible new art
  form.
  
• It was a total party experience, complete with
  lights, music, cameras, theater, incense, and
  LSD.
  
• The music at these public parties was provided by
  the Warlocks, soon to rename themselves The
  Grateful Dead.
  
• During these parties people would play weird
  sounds, do spontaneous theater, and make magic.
  
• The conditions were designed to manipulate the
  suggestibility of the psychedelic condition to
  push people further, and to push people
  together.
• Ultimately, thousands of people showed up at
  these parties, which were becoming famous.
  

34
Kesey is busted, 1966

• By the end of 1965, Keseys Acid Tests were the
  psychedelic equivalent of a Billy Graham
  crusade.
  
• The tests peaked out in 1966 at the Tripps
  Festival, where 10,000 people paid admission to
  come in and gawk or grok.
  
• Just before this event Kesey was arrested for pot
  and this time the authorities intended to put
  him away for good. Kesey decided to flee to
  Oregon while he appealed. When Kesey vanished,
  the movement temporarily lost one of its most
  charismatic leaders.
• And at just the moment that the movement was
  about to snowball.

Ken Kesey in San Francisco, 1966, with some of
the Merry Pranksters.
35
Leary and Buddhism

• Meanwhile, Timothy Leary had become interested in
  Buddhist mysticism. He believed that he was a
  tool of the great transformation of our age.
  
• Occasionally Leary himself lapsed into his Holy
  Man performance to the irritation of some
  insiders who felt he had too big of an ego.
  
• To many in the counterculture, the evolution of
  the human race depended on the restoration of
  unity between outer science (Western philosophy)
  and inner yoga (Eastern philosophy).
• Many were experimenting with Eastern ideas by the
  mid-1960s.

Timothy Leary at Millbrook house incorporating
Eastern philosophy. The new spiritualism
associated with the psychedelic movement of the
1960s drew people outside of their traditional
religious foundations to seek ideas from other
cultures. The Beatles helped popularize Eastern
mysticism when they went to India.
36
Millbrook issues

• One problem at Millbrook was that when Leary left
  the estate to research Buddhism or other topics,
  Millbrook sometimes devolved into a hedonist
  playground for omnisexuals.
• Plus, petty personal conflicts emerged.
• Another problem was that some people wanted to
  push the envelope to higher and higher doses of
  acid. The problem was that they always came back
  down and little had really changed.
• Yet another problem was that Leary had problems
  with finances. Millbrook was expensive to
  operate.
  
• Consequently he began to devote weekends to
  paying customers who paid to have a drug-free
  experiential weekend workshops designed to
  stimulate psychedelic growth and enlightenment.

Millbrook, 1966.
37
Leary is busted big in 1966

• The politics of LSD were getting repressive by
  the mid-60s. Leary had moved from research, to
  politics, to the idea that people should be free
  to feed their minds without government
  restrictions.
• But by now government and medical bureaucracies
  were portraying LSD as worse than heroin. A new
  era of Prohibition was on the horizon.
  
• In 1966, Leary was busted for pot in Texas (it
  had been found on his daughter) and received a
  30-year jail sentence plus a 30,000 fine.
  
• He appealed and set up a defense fund, but this
  was the beginning of the end.

Leary was busted for possession of marijuana in
1966 but the verdict was overturned on appeal
later. He would be arrested again in 1968.
38
Leary part shaman, part showman

• Media coverage of Timothy Leary tended to portray
  him as a colorful weirdo not to be taken too
  seriously. When he was taken seriously he was
  often criticized for not being serious or
  responsible enough to the movement. He was caught
  between these two characterizations.
• Leary was becoming part showman, because this
  helped pay the bills, yet Leary saw himself as
  part shaman.
  
• Meanwhile the authorities had staked out
  Millbrook with the intention of shutting it
  down.
  
• It was none other than G. Gordon Liddy, the local
  DA and future Watergate burglar (chief operative
  of the White House Plumbers), who sent 24
  deputies to raid Millbrook in 1966.

Leary appeared at the 1969 Washington War
Moratorium protest. In 1970 he began to serve a
10-year sentence for marijuana possession but he
escaped with the help of the Weathermen.
39
LSD outlawed in 1966

• The Psychedelic Movement had grown so large that
  by 1966 American politicians began to react to
  it.
  
• The reaction was severe.
• The governors of California and Nevada competed
  for the prestige of being the first to sign
  anti-LSD legislation.
  
• Their eagerness was matched by Washington
  politicians.
  
• By October of 1966, the possession of LSD had
  been made illegal in every state in the country.
  

Anti-LSD propaganda helped fuel the rising public
concern over hallucinogens. President Nixons
War on Drugs utilized such propaganda to generate
fear that LSD use would cause genetic mutations
and other harmful effects.
40
The LSD backlash

• The backlash against LSD was not simple politics.
  It wasnt until 1965 that concrete evidence of
  its danger first appeared. This evidence was
  legitimate and it suggested that people with
  unstable personalities were prone to
  disintegration when exposed to LSD in
  uncontrolled settings. They tended to freak out
  in an anxious or panicked state.
• A second problem with LSD was that some people
  claimed to have flashbacks months after
  tripping.
  
• The mainstream media immediately exploited these
  fears and began to portray LSD as a social
  danger.
  
• At the same time authorities released anti-LSD
  propaganda, much of which made false claims about
  LSD causing chromosomal damage or other permanent
  harmful chemical alterations.
• In March of 1966, Time Magazine declared that
  America was in the midst of an LSD epidemic.

This is an image from an anti-LSD pamphlet
distributed by authorities in 1971. The copy
above this image says, Dr. Allen Katzenburg, of
Southwestern Foundation for Research and
Education, San Antonio, Texas has estimated that
LSD use has caused more genetic damage to the
human race than the atomic bomb.
41
Is .7 temporary psychosis that bad?

• Unfortunately there was little hard data on this.
  Among researchers it was largely agreed that
  roughly 2 who took LSD in uncontrolled settings
  experienced anxiety or panic attacks.
• Of that 2, one-third became temporarily
  psychotic.
  
• In other words .7 of LSD users had a temporarily
  psychotic breakdown.
  
• However, the mainstream media and politicians
  tended to exaggerate these psychotic breakdowns,
  and LSD was labeled a drug that causes insanity.

This is one of the rare 1966 articles on LSD
among mainstream magazines that was not negative.
42
The LSD Witch-Hunt

• The LSD witch-hunt after 1966 occurred partly
  from
  
• 1. Ignorance.
• 2. Capitalist journalistic styles that emphasize
  sensationalism.
  
• 3. The dominant value system that all drugs are
  bad.
  
• 4. Poor research. For example the FDA concluded
  that 3.6 million people had an LSD problem by
  counting known illegal cases (360) and
  multiplying them arbitrarily by 10,000.
• The Reefer Madness of the 1930s had become LSD
  Madness in the 1960s.
  

LSD-inspired art and music often has a swirling
flow to it that echoes the sensory experience of
an acid trip. For a fascinating look at how LSD
affects the work of an artist as they are
tripping click on this link.
43
LSD Research Conclusions

• The researchers generally did find one thing to
  agree about regarding LSD it did offer the
  potential to affect personality (for better or
  worse, depending on ones views).
• Regarding personality change, researchers had
  found only one significant effect on personality.
  
  
• In 1966, a Rand Corporation study concluded that
  LSD users tended to have second thoughts about
  settling into a routine corporate job after a
  single acid trip. Rather, the user stated they
  would prefer a more contemplative lifestyle.
• If a person became more sensitive to poetry and
  music but less concerned with competition and
  success, is this good or bad? People do not agree
  here.
• But even this effect wore off over time if users
  stopped tripping.
  

It appears this couple has rejected the corporate
lifestyle. They seem happy.
44
LSD a mixed bag

• Perhaps the most threatening aspect of LSD is its
  unpredictability. It is difficult to tell what it
  will do beforehand.
  
• Therefore, it is not surprising that some
  authorities were so concerned.
  
• The fallout led to LSDs outlaw by 1966 and to
  Sandozs decision to stop making LSD even for
  research purposes - in 1966.
  
• This was at the very time that many researchers
  were saying that what was needed was more
  research.

45
LSD a 3-part story

• Some view the LSD story as a 3-part story
• 1. A scientific story about the potential of LSD
  to unlock consciousness.
  
• 2. A religious story about LSD as a means to
  human salvation.
  
• 3. A cultural story involving a cultural revolt
  against the over-socialized or over-disciplined
  self into a more hedonistic and re-creative self.

46
The Counterculture

• At the essence of the 1960s is a restless desire
  for change.
  
• The question was, in what direction?
• Kids of the 1960s were beginning to believe that
  large corporations were part of the problem
  during the 60s. Corporations seemed to promote
  rampant materialism and used advertising to make
  people feel insecure.
• Yet most kids in the counterculture realized that
  corporations were only the tip of the iceberg.
  The real menace was The Establishment the web
  of institutions, of which corporations were
  members, that formed the basic infrastructure of
  the society. Change was needed but where should
  the priorities be in starting this change?

Most of these people are recognizable to
Americans, and most identified with key elements
of the 1960s counterculture.
47
The Counterculture

• Big Business, Big Government, Big Labor all
  were part of the Establishment and its promotion
  of
  
• Anticommunism and militarism.
• Greed and American hegemony abroad.
• An emphasis on managing people as cogs in a
  machine-like system.
  
• Americans were polarized about how to view
  themselves during the 60s. Was it better to
  dismantle the Establishment and redistribute
  wealth or was it better to get a good job?
• One of the rising strains within the
  counterculture was hedonism. Students who
  advocated a disciplined and carefully structured
  campaign against the Establishment were running
  into others who advocated hedonism and personal
  politics as solutions to a repressive society.
  The counterculture was divided.

48
Kesey and the Counterculture

• Ken Kesey was opposed to Vietnam and the
  Establishment, but he was equally opposed to the
  idea of youth as a political vanguard to seize
  power in the name of equality.
• To Kesey, this was playing their game. Kesey
  felt that people should simply turn their backs
  on the combine.
  
• And many did just that - to the disappointment
  of the SDS and other political radicals who
  advocated a disciplined political solution.
  
• Those who dropped out called themselves freaks
  or heads. By 1965, the youth protest movement
  had two symbolic capitols Berkeley for the
  radicals and Haight Ashbury for the heads.

49
The Hippies

• The hippies emerged by way of the Beats by the
  mid-60s, but unlike the nihilistic and dark
  Beats, the hippies were colorful and loving.
  
• The hippies were the locus of the personal
  political revolution, where individual diversity
  was championed in context of communal
  allegiances.
• To hippies, the revolution started from within -
  with the ego and the self - and LSD was the tool
  of this personal revolution because it opened the
  self up for change. Taking acid was a very
  serious thing.

50
The Hippies

• At first, hippies used acid as a de-conditioning
  agent to remove elements of the overly
  socialized, conventional self.
  
• Haight-Ashbury provided the geographic context
  for this re-making of the self.
  
• The catalyst in this was Ken Kesey and the Acid
  Tests, where the Merry Pranksters introduced
  thousands of people to acid way more than Leary
  had done.
• By the summer of 1966, 15,000 people were living
  and tripping in the Haight, and from this emerged
  countercultural shops of all kinds.

51
A Creative Awakening

• The Psychedelic movement initiated new forms of
  slang LSD was acid, a user was an acid head, a
  dose was a hit, marijuana was pot, getting high
  was groovy, people were far out in cosmic or
  bummer ways, etc.
• People who moved to the Haight typically changed
  their names.
  
• Huxley predicted that acid would awaken the baby
  boomers appetite for spiritual meaning but he
  had not anticipated the diverse sources of this
  food astrology, numerology, black magic,
  Eastern mysticism, various New Age philosophies,
  etc.
• All of these aspects of spiritual awakening tend
  to emphasize that knowledge and direct experience
  go hand in hand. They emphasize experiential
  knowledge over book knowledge.

Perhaps the best band and album of the 1960s was
the Beatles Sgt Peppers. This incredible album
was heavily influenced by acid and pot use. Click
the image above to hear Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds in mp3 format.
52
Sex, Drugs, and Rocknroll

• At the center of the lifestyle was sex, drugs and
  rocknroll. Rock music was a perfect complement
  to drugs, as was dancing. The outside world was
  temporarily exorcized.
• Doing acid was not conducive to having a full
  time job, so many hippies had part time jobs. For
  this reason they also pooled their resources and
  developed a sense of tribe or extended family.

53
The decline of the movement

• So this was the choice within the counterculture
  hippie or radical activist. While LSD was
  outlawed in 1966 the momentum of the psychedelic
  movement carried it into the late 60s and early
  70s.
• Unfortunately, instead of coming together as one
  beautiful tribe, Haight Ashbury was getting
  zooier. A miscalculation had occurred by 1968
  kids were tripping wherever and whenever they
  could without much interest in human
  spirituality.
• Hedonism, a feature of the dominant capitalist
  culture, was usurping the drive of the
  counterculture. LSD was becoming merely a source
  of mindless fun, or worse, a source of escapism
  for some. Rising cocaine use was also usurping
  the countercultures spiritual ideals.
• By the late 60s, many kids were using LSD for the
  wrong reasons and in the wrong settings and bad
  trips were becoming more common. (It didnt help
  that the acid was often of inferior quality and
  frequently had strychnine in it).

54
The decline of the movement

• In the end, the psychedelic movement withered due
  to
  
• 1. A new era of Prohibition and ignorance about
  the nature of LSD and countercultural drugs in
  general.
  
• 2. A split in the movement between hippies and
  radical activists.
  
• Hippies emphasize personal change, with LSD as
  the tool for transformation, along with hedonism,
  with nirvana as the ultimate goal.
  
• Radical activists emphasize institutional change
  with disciplined social activism as the tool for
  change toward utopia.
  
• 3. A collapse of idealism by the late 60s, along
  with rising cynicism and fatalism.

55
Legacy of the Psychedelic Movement

• What is left of the psychedelic movement is
• 1. Largely underground again due to Prohibition.
• 2. Taking new forms in various New Age movements
  involving spiritualism.
  
• 3. The legacy of new music, art and dance forms
  that involve wildly expressive or trance like
  behaviors (raves, electronic trance music, avant
  garde art forms, etc). Click here for an
  interesting music-oriented site, for example.
• 4. Found in the subcultural legacy of the Dead,
  Phish, Radiohead, and other post-hippie segments
  of society.

Radiohead is one of many current popular bands
that have been influenced by the psychedelic
movement.
56
End